ハイスコアガール / High Score Girl

I was wary for a long time about these CG anime shows. CG crept into anime bit by bit – first vehicles in shows like Last Exile, then mecha, then cute girls strictly when singing and dancing, and now we’ve reached the stage where whole shows are made in CG. I’d still much rather see traditional animation, and CG animation on TV still usually looks awkward and stiff, but slowly these shows are winning me over. I really enjoy watching Koneko no Chii even after its transitionto CG, and Kemono Friends is undoubtedly cute even if the animation style is rough around the edges.

With High Score Girl, I wanted to watch no matter the medium. I love shows that bring in characters or references from all kinds of properties that you don’t often see together. Maybe the trend got a bit out of hand lately with Wreck-It Ralph and Ready Player One and all the rest of it, but the prospect of the show heavily referencing nostalgic video games really appealed to me. There was also a bit of interesting history here, with SNK having made a copyright claim against Square for use of their characters in the original manga, later settled out of court. The very premise of these characters sharing pages with dozens of other retro game characters really piqued my interest.

There isn’t actually much of the game characters in the series. Aside from Guile from Street Fighter, who acts as a kind of guardian angel, generally we just see games as the characters play them. A few others pop up from time to time, but this isn’t a story about video game characters or anything like that. It’s a story about a boy who plays games.

Partly, this show is fun to watch because of the nostalgia goggles. Obviously, I didn’t grow up in Japan, but I did grow up at a time when the arcade scene was thriving. It’s so fun to see someone getting excited over Mortal Kombat or Darkstalkers games, and remembering back when Tekken and Virtua Fighter were the new kids on the block.

At its core, this is a love story. A love triangle story, in fact. There’s a funny-looking kid obsessed with games called Yaguchi Haruo, and the only thing that’s important to him is playing video games, right when they’re emerging. Otherwise he’s a bit useless. Useless at sports, useless in school, useless with girls. Except that one day he comes across his elite, rich, ladylike classmate Oono playing Street Fighter 2. The two of them then become close and begin to bond over escaping the problems of their daily lives by playing games. Not only that but a few years later, another girl called Hidaka is drawn to Yaguchi’s passion and develops a crush on him.

Now, on a superficial level, this is some pretty awkward wish-fulfilment with a certain level of objectification that is uncomfortable. Despite being a scrawny, ugly kid who just loves to game, this boy gets not one beautiful girl but two falling for him. Pretty standard wish-fulfilment. To make it even more questionable, the idealised, universally-adored, wonderful love interest Oono has a defining characteristic – she never talks. The perfect girl that everyone loves is the one who doesn’t ever speak. Just blushes, relies on the boy she likes and occasionally gets angry and lashes out at him in slapstick style. The perfect girl doesn’t speak. Not because she can’t. She just doesn’t, or is never seen doing so onscreen.  

But y’know, strange as that is, Oono is very cute at the same time as being mute. I suppose there’s space to project onto her. And Yaguchi being so hapless yet having one all-consuming passion makes him very easy to identify with. He can be crude or neglectful at times, but it seems understandable, and he often gets the chance to demonstrate that he’s a good guy with a good heart. And that’s why I kept coming back to High Score Girl and will absolutely watch the OVA and any more they animate.

I don’t think this show will go down in history as one of the best, but it was absolutely a fun watch and satisfying from start to end. And the little appearances of some great games of the past definitely sweetened the deal.  

Kingdom Hearts χ Back Cover

After finally getting around to Kingdom Hearts HD 2.8 Final Chapter Prologue as we build up to the long-awaited release of Kingdom Hearts 3, I sat down to watch Back Cover having heard pretty much only bad things. Nonsensical, boring, nothing to do with the Kingdom Hearts familiar to fans. And while yes, it has a lot of problems, I enjoyed this animation quite a bit. But I’m aware that it took very specific circumstances for me to enjoy it.

I really don’t think this would be enjoyable for someone who hasn’t played Kingdom Hearts χ or Kingdom Hearts Union χ, which is a remake of χ but removing its ending and continuing past that point (which is confusing enough as it is – I’ve only played Union χ so to get the full story so far had to go and look up the original ending). There was some suggestion that this animation would retell the story, making playing through Union χ unnecessary, but that’s not true at all. Without knowledge of the Union χ story I seriously doubt that anyone would have more than a vague idea of what’s going on here. This extended cutscene basically retells the story of the Master of Masters and his apprentices, which drives the action of Union χ but is absolutely not its story. I don’t see how anyone who only watches this would understand the Union χ storyline or have any idea who Ephemer is or what he does. It obviously doesn’t continue to the new story Union χ has continued to unfold, with the new Union leaders like Lauriam or Bl…Blay…dammit, ‘Brain’.  So basically, it’s a companion piece to Kingdom Hearts χ and it is still absolutely necessary to play it or Union χ through – or watch the cutscenes at least, to understand the Keyblade War and the beginning of the Kingdom Hearts story.

Which is not to say that this part of the story is actually good. It’s pretty poor storytelling, with the kind of annoying prophecy-spurs-action narrative that I really don’t like. The Master of Masters, who wears the cloak later associated with Organization XIII and who actually has a playful personality that is by far the most interesting writing choice in this part of the narrative, can see the future thanks to the eye he implanted in the keyblade ‘No Name’. He knows a great war is coming, so prepares his six apprentices for this cataclysm by giving them specific roles. And then of course it is their attempting to follow his guidance that leads to the war taking place. The storyline intentionally leaves open questions – who is the traitor? What’s in the box? Where did the Master of Masters go, and why did Luxu disappear too? These are interesting issues for those of us invested in this storyline, but not at all for fans who have only followed the main games, and probably mostly bewildering.

As I say, for a hardcore fan who already knew this story, and who is playing the clunky, money-grabbing browser/mobile game, this is great. We get to see in CG what was hitherto only in iffy cut-out animation. We can enjoy vocal performances and get the Foretellers with way more personality. Ava is so sweet, Gula both adorable and suspicious, Invi so much more virtuous than I read them in the game, and for me that really helps differentiate them. Ephemer is also infinitely more likeable and cute as he appears here – and of course it’s fun to see Chirithy nicely-rendered. As the first fully original animation, these impressions belong on my animation blog more than my thoughts on the movie versions of 358/2 Days or Re:Coded, even if part of a video game, and while perhaps everything is a bit overly glossy, with lots of perfectly-laundered unicorn outfits and shiny leather belts, this was a very nicely-made animation that I enjoyed watching.

Not even remotely explanatory for the uninitiated, absolutely not a replacement for playing or watching through the full story of the χ games and almost certainly just a bewildering mess to the uninitiated, for the people it was actually made for – those of us who actually play even the shoddiest spin-offs just to get the full story – this is a highly enjoyable vignette. But I absolutely understand why most people hated it.  

ソードアート・オンライン オルタナティブ ガンゲイル・オンライン / Sword Art Online Alternative: Gun Gale Online

In a season of very silly, trashy anime - I'm looking at you, Uma Musume - a new Sword Art Online spin-off suggested it might aim to be taken a little more seriously. Well, that idea was soon put to rest when it became clear the central premise would be super-cute loli characters using guns. And that's really about the extent of it. 

It's actually quite a joyful and exuberant clash. The two central pillars of the anime are pleasingly contrasted - super-cute little girls with bunny-ear hats dressed all in pink, and gun otaku writing, preoccupied with military tactics, bullet calibres, magazine capacities and suchlike. It's kind of like Babymetal - contrasting the cutesiness and the aggressive manliness is inherently absurd and fun.

And the universe of Sword Art Online is a good one for this premise. There's an acceptable in-universe reason that we have a sweet lil' girl in a gun-totin' universe - our main character in the real world is a girl with a complex about her height. She's very tall and feels as though that means she's not cute. It hurts her self-confidence, so she seeks an escape in the full-immersion VR games of this universe. However, time after time she gets rendered as some hulking Valkyrie type, which only makes her feel worse. Only when she enters shooting game Gun Gale Online does she get rendered as a little cutie, so that’s what she sticks with. Makes sense. 

Later, of course, more loli contrivance comes about as her best friend also appears as a cute lil’ loli so that they can make a lil’ loli team, and a group of big beefy women she meets in the game of course have real life counterparts who are the most adorable little girls – who by coincidence our main character knows in real life. There’s further contrivance in the final reveal of who the antagonist is, which is about the most obvious twist possible and was clearly telegraphed a few episodes in.

For all that this is a very daft anime, though, and for all I wish they’d proceeded to finally animate the only Sword Art Online arc I’ve actually wanted to see since it became clear the main show was getting insufferable partway through season 1, I enjoyed this for what it was. I liked how rather than focusing too much on real military manoeuver tactics, this show explores how the game mechanics can be exploited. The main characters were also engaging, the little loli Llenn-chan being very sweet, the antagonist Pitohui entertainingly unhinged in a very Black Lagoon sort of a way, and stoic M-san actually giving the impression of being someone who cares about the game itself.

The attempts to make the stakes seem meaningful were questionable at best, and the overall story flow was kind of poor – introduction and then two rounds of a tournament back-to-back – but this fluff was at least cute, entertaining and occasionally a little clever within its own setting. Worth watching, if not revisiting. And I guess since this is a different studio, relatively new company 3Hz, it ought not to be delaying any other SAO production. 

Kingdom Hearts Re:coded

I don’t have a whole lot to say about Re:coded, but I wrote an entry like this for 358/2 Days and intend to do it when I get around to 2.8 and Back Cover, so it makes sense to put a little something together.

But Coded was always the least consequential of the Kingdom Hearts games. You could understand the overall story without 358/2 Days, but it filled in a lot of backstory for Roxas and Axel in particular – which is vital for trying to get us to accept Lea in KH3. Coded on the other hand could be left out altogether.

Like all the minor KH games, this was a handheld spin-off. Not just a handheld console game, but a phone game. It was later ported to the DS and pushed that hardware fairly well. It was also fun because you could make it very difficult if you wanted to. Story-wise, however, it was a bit of a dull chick.

The story revolves around the Disney characters discovering that the journal Jiminy Cricket kept has been wiped. Apparently a semi-digital creation, they use a data version of Sora to recompile the fragments of data and eliminate bugs that have somehow been included. Pete and Maleficent get involved and it all gets more convoluted, and the ending actually supplies a little more depth and clarity to Naminé’s character and decisions, but so far at least, this game’s events haven’t had any significant repercussions. The Re:coded release added a little bridging scene between Birth By Sleep and Dream Drop Distance, which is quite fun, but doesn’t give any information other than making it clear that what will happen in KH3 is a result of defeating the other forms of Xehanort.

This HD remaster doesn’t have any new visuals, either, though it is quite nice to see the story presented in a nicer way. The cast come in to record the lines, too, Haley Joel Osment now well-practised in his slightly weird high-pitched Sora voice, which still sounds very odd coming out of the KH1 model, but that definitely makes for a more entertaining ‘movie’.

Final Mix 1.5 had a fun game, a lacklustre game and a fairly interesting movie. 2.5 has two fantastic games and a rather throwaway movie. But I have to say of the two, the latter is a far better package. 

Wakfu: season 3

After waiting years for season 3 of Wakfu, tided over by the OVAs, Aux trésors de Kerubim and the Dofus movie, I was extremely excited for these too-brief 13 episodes. Especially because making Ankama animations is expensive and if the season isn’t a big enough success, it may be the last we ever see of Yugo and co. So it was with great eagerness that I dove into the World of Twelve once again. And ultimately, I have to confess that I’m a little disappointed.

The set-up was very promising – after the previous seasons and OVAs dealt with the threats of the Eliacube, the mysterious Eliotropes and perhaps the biggest worldly threat, Ogrest. In this season, I thought we would be turning to the final, most powerful beings – the twelve gods. And while they were broached and were central to the plot, they were in no way the season’s antagonists or a tangible presence.

The other major strands to be taken care of were centred on Yugo’s interpersonal relationships. First, his shattered bonds with his brother Adamaï, teased as the season’s antagonist after growing up to look very much like Frieza. Second, his feelings for Amalia. The former actually led to a pretty roundabout and unsatisfying character arc where it seemed unlikely Adamaï should have gone down the path he chose or done the things he did to his former allies. The latter was stirred and broiled this season and provided some of the best emotive moments, but of course could not be resolved.

But ultimately all of this took a backseat to a very disappointing overarching story. The antagonist was intriguing at first but was soon revealed to be rather uninteresting with a lame plan and borrowed power. Rather worse, his plan revolved around that most tired and uninteresting of anime tropes, the floor-by-floor tournament in a big tower. Not only was his motive unconvincing – with none of what he planned for in the tower actually unfolding and it all eventually just falling apart on him – it meant most of these precious final episodes were spent on things like talking to a little girl about animals or playing a weird physical pinball game with a creepy pantie fetishist. After the Dofus movie kicked up the storytelling excitement so much I had high hopes for this season, but ended up let down to the end.

There also seemed to be a real lack of attention to detail. There’s a lot we just aren’t told. What happened to Chibi? Why were there some demigods we didn’t even get an introduction for? Who was going to replace Xelor, Hareboug? And did Harebourg and Coqueline’s animals share the fate of the pocket dimension? What happened in the Sadida kingdom after Amalia left it? Will Rubilax consider his contract filled and seek freedom, even if he of course is just a big tsundere and likes being around Pinpin? Couple all this with an unsatisfying cliffhanger ending, some obvious recycled animation that highlighted a stretched budget and way too much focus on Iop fights that really didn’t bring anything new to the adventure and there was a lot of disappointment.

Which isn’t to say it was all bad. Every episode was in some way a joy to watch and I still love Wakfu in general and was excited right until the end, even if I feel a little let down overall. If there’s more, I will absolutely be watching it. It was nice to see Yugo just a little grown up, having grown out of his weird bulgy forearms. And the kids, Elely and Flopin, were a joy – Flopin was adorably soft and caring while Elely was her father’s daughter, strong, bold and always upbeat. And even if only a little, it was nice to finally have some Ruel backstory and development.

While I miss Wakfu being a simple story of adventurers on a quest, moving it to more serious and ambitious territory was absolutely a good move. But the moment the show took everything to a tower in a pocket universe, with a vague plot about suicide bombing a dimension we know next to nothing about, there was a severe lack of emotional stakes and pretending Tristepin was going to die for the fiftieth time wasn’t going to cut it. It’s also telling that some of the most moving moments we saw were just visions inside the characters’ heads – especially inside Yugo’s, where he’s tormented by old antagonists who always were more interesting than him.

I really do want to see what happens to Yugo and the rest. I want to see Elely and Flopin and the new baby reach their potential. I’d like to see them clash with the gods and challenge them to be less complacent. I’d like to know what can become of Yugo and Amalia. I’m still hugely invested emotionally in this world and enjoy the episodes. It’s just that I had very high hopes and I feel a little let down. Not because I feel my expectations were unrealistically high. Just that I hoped Ankama would be able to at least move me as much as they did with the Dofus movie with characters that I care about more. But that wasn’t going to happen floor-by-floor in a tower in a pocket dimension. 

ソードアート・オンラインII / Sword Art Online II

By the time SAO’s first season ended, I had gone off it in a big way. At the start, pretty-faced Kirito was an underdog I rooted for, sweet-natured and ostracised in an unoriginal but interesting world. By the end, he was the undisputed master swordsman of all the universe, replete with powers that were his alone and not just a beautiful and adorable – if rather dull – girlfriend, but a whole harem of girls to suit any taste. Including those who like the idea of their sister having a crush on them. He was no longer in any way an underdog, the way situations resolved themselves were very contrived, and the cloying way everyone worshipped his every action – including pseudo-government types taking him on as a kind of consultant – became annoying. Kirito became far too like a male Bella Swan, who everyone also loves for no reason.

For all that, though, I was willing to give the second season a chance. There was a lot of talk about the later arcs being much better from fans of the books, and it was after all a cover of Kirito with a mysterious cute boy that drew me into the series in the first place...though the boy, Eugeo, has yet to appear. Guess I’ll have to see in season 3.

Sword Art Online’s big problem is Kirito, and this season doesn’t quite deal with that problem – though the second arc here finds an interim solution. Kirito is just not very likeable, nor identifiable as wish fulfilment. His skills continue to be a cut above, and he seems just a little smug about that, and more crucially the stakes are very low now. He’s in online games, not fighting for his life. Plus he is pretty enough that when his character gets long hair, people think he’s a girl. Perhaps that’s meant to make him the butt of a joke, but its effect is to make him seem yet more perfect and beautiful. And it’s annoying!

The reason he has a new avatar is that he’s sent into a new game to track down a killer. A mysterious figure seems to have the ability to shoot a gun in the game and kill someone in real life. Of course, Kirito is the one to be sent to sort this out. Though this is an American shooting game, Kirito of course not only adapts to it immediately but decides to use a lightsaber and charge down all the campers and duellists. Because he’s super special.

Of course, he finds a new girl whose deep mental issues he manages to solve with a few platitudes, so he can add one more to his harem. Sinon is a sniper and using the game as therapy. By sheer coincidence she has a personal connection with the bad guy in the picture, and super Kirito figures everything out.

After a brief and not very interesting side-quest wherein Kirito and the gang finish a quest that might have destroyed their whole world and of course rewards Kirito with Excalibur, Best Sword in the Game, the final arc begins – and yes, it’s the best arc since the first one. That’s largely because Kirito is taken out of the picture – a little like how the best part of the Suzumiya Haruhi franchise is when she disappears. Instead, Asuna is placed centre-stage when an incredibly good swordswoman takes an interest in her and recruits her into defeating a boss with just a small but elite party. Not only does Asuna figure out why the party had been failing until that point (they are being spied upon) and lead them to final victory, she comes to understand the swordswoman well. Yuuki and her friends have come together because they are all terminal patients with extremely weak bodies, eager to make a lasting impression at least on a virtual world, which will record their names. Some parts of the story I find rather weak and exploitative, with overwrought sexual tension between the two girls screaming fanservice rather than something sweet, and the set-up being blatantly contrived to have an attempted tear-jerker ending. As a result, I found it rang a bit false.

But overall, it was beyond a doubt a breath of fresh air. Asuna may not be a very interesting character, but she was given some new dimensions here. The scenes in the real world were quite delicate and sweet, especially when Asuna fixed it so that she could take Yuuki’s virtual presence with her for an ordinary day at school, and I’d quite like to know more about the other group members...especially the cute boy whose name – a little gratingly for me – was Jun. Perhaps they’ll crop up in future episodes.

The fact is, I’m fairly sure there’ll be more Sword Art Online, and that I’ll watch it. But I can’t say it will be with much enthusiasm. The series outstayed its welcome, and thus far not enough has been done to make it better. It’s one of the success stories of recent years, but really it’s a show that’s still trading on its strong opening episodes and cute designs...

That said, it surprises me that Kirito remains a very popular character. There’s still a very loyal fanbase to this series! I guess there are people who don’t want to root for the underdog – but want their avatar in a story a bit overly perfect. Which I suppose would also explain No Game No Life.

Kingdom Hearts 1.5 HD Remix - Part 2: 358/2 Days

Of course, I don't normally have Playstation games on my animation blog, but here - since this extra is not really a game, and you are just watching computer-generated figures in an animation - I feel justified.

Of all the Kingdom Hearts games, 358/2 Days was my least favourite - yes, even including Re:Coded. An overlong game of the same thing over and over, with exceptionally easy hidden bosses, an irritating angst-fest of a story, characters I have never liked and one of those horribly annoying boss fights where you win, then in the cutscene afterwards you are immediately overpowered, making you wonder why you had to do the fight in the first place. 

But the HD remix was quite a different prospect. For one thing, it was the most dramatically-improved game graphically in this HD set - though the cutscenes in the original game looked impressive for the DS, that's still quite a significant qualifier. For another, with all-new voice acting, it was the part of the project that had the most new experiences attached. And honestly, not having to play through the whole damn game again - possibly even several times if they kept the same trophy structure - was a blessing. My original plan was to play this after Re:Chain of Memories, or perhaps to watch the cutscenes up to the point when the Organization members depart for Castle Oblivion and then play the game, returning for the rest of the cutscenes afterwards - probably the best chronology of the remastered trilogy - but then I discovered that there are cards I'm not going to get in CoM if I don't get through 358/2 Days first, so I prioritised this. 

My feelings haven't changed, exactly, but I felt a lot more charitable towards the characters and the game as a whole after experiencing the story a second time. Remove the frustrating player experience and one headache is taken away, which is a major plus point, but I also have a somewhat better understanding of the idea of Nobodies in the series - when I played, I thought the hints in this direction were just the characters being misled, where by now we have learnt that in fact, the central characters' proximity to the 'hero' actually has made them recover some aspect of a heart. I was annoyed before that Nobodies had been established as a kind of heartless, incapable of true feelings, and thus the variety of feelings on display here were illusory - which is no longer a possibility. Of course, this brings about a variety of complex implications to Sora's moral path, centred on the fact that he could have subdued and rehabilitated all but the most evil of the Nobodies and through just being near them returned them to a kind of humanity, and though he could not have known this, it will feel like a horrible oversight to me that he will likely never realise and come to feel deep remorse.

This is a story conceived entirely to be tragic - to build something pleasant to revel in tearing it down. Roxas, whose fate we already know when we begin the game, is already a miserable enough character even before the development of the Riku Replica storyline leads to Xion. The set-up has Roxas and Xion unable to coexist indefinitely, each causing the other misery - at first through insecurity as they don't understand the effect each has on the other, and then later through a pointless struggle against inevitable loss. The fact that the focus then shifts to the fact that they begin as friends - and the added factor of the necessity for Xion to be entirely forgotten for the plot to continue - results in the most angst-ridden of all Square Enix's recent angst-a-thons, to the order of The World Ends With You cubed.

Yet, partly because I now know they are indeed supposed to have developed genuine humanity rather than merely acting according to memories of genuine feelings - which was the set-up - I liked all the characters more this time. I still dislike Axel and first and foremost will remember his smug, swaggering character in Chain of Memories and, indeed, Kingdom Hearts II,  but his helplessness towards the end here is actually quite appealing, and the glimpses beneath the facade his diary entries afford show there is some depth to him - overlaid, at least, on what has been established prior to this game. His actions throughout the series remain the result of his stunted, selfish personality, and I don't look forward to how Kingdom Hearts 3 will portray the restored Lea (especially in relation to Ventus, who I really don't want to become a Roxas substitute), but when his plans finally go awry and he is adrift and helpless, I could begin to sympathise with him. With Xion, her imposition on the storyline still rankles somewhat, but she is a victim - one of the purest victims any video game I've played focuses on - and ultimately a plaything of cruel men, and I found myself feeling more protective than before. I prefer this voice actress than when Kairi's steps in, and the insubstantial quality to her feeble struggle is quite moving. I also noticed that the HD version seems to highlight her facial similarities to Sora more than to Kairi, which changes the dynamic very slightly, reminding me more immediately of the impossibility of her sustaining any kind of existence.

Then there's Roxas. Roxas, who I didn't want to have to deal with at all in Kingdom Hearts II, and less still here. I have never liked Roxas - making it perhaps bizarre that I love his doppelganger Ventus so much and would consider his showing up here to reflect Braig's odd obsession with one rather unremarkable moment in what is still one of the series' best moments of foreshadowing the highlight of this whole experience. But Roxas doesn't have as much of an attitude problem here as I recall him having - and perhaps I find the adolescent outbursts more ridiculous (and therefore cute) than before, like when he bothers to get his diary out to break off into a one-line all-caps mini-rant about how he won't put up with this treatment.

It is also probably the game where Riku is the most tolerable, as a harsh yet dependable sounding-board for Xion despite their conflicts (and another adorably adolescent diary entry, from her this time). He is in a place of repentance, here, but also put into a mentor position, authoritative, standoffish and ultimately self-sacrificing - it makes a big difference from the rash brat of the first game.

Ultimately, I still think that Organization XIII was a huge mistake for the writers of the series, especially how they have dominated every game since Chain of Memories except Birth by Sleep. In DDD we discover that the whole thing was a sham anyway. As characters, they are not a compelling bunch - I find only Xigbar to be enjoyable (and Braig, who is very much the same) - the idea of them completing and then using a recreated Kingdom Hearts never feels like enough of a threat for game 2 (especially in light of Master Xehanort eventually declaring them all failures and making a new Organization XIII out of various versions of himself) and the more they are developed, the worse it is for the character of Sora - who becomes an unfeeling psychopathic butcher if you make the characters too human...though of course it has since in one of the worst plot-wriggles of the series been revealed that defeating Nobodies and the heartless formed when they were created somehow brings Somebodies back to life...as opposed to the hearts going to Xemnas' Kingdom Hearts like everyone else's. 

For all the convolution, this is a period of time the series needed to cover in some form - from Roxas' inception to his being captured and digitised by DiZ - and the sheer unrelenting tragedy is probably appropriate. The trouble is that it just seems so juvenile...in a way that, perhaps paradoxically, the cheerful adventures of Sora through Disney worlds does not.

テイルズ オブ シンフォニア THE ANIMATION 世界統合編 / Tales of Symphonia: the Animation Sekai Tougou-hen / United World

Symphonia is the Final Fantasy VII of the Tales Of series. Possibly not the most fun to play nor with the best graphics, characters or writing, but the most iconic and memorable, and the one that I personally enjoy the most, in part because I enjoyed it so much when it was the newest RPG around. It never attained the universal acclaim of Square's big hit, amongst RPG fans its popularity has always been high.

It's also a good time to be a fan. The HD remake, including the dodgy sequel, is soon to be released, and in Japan, that meant we could enjoy promotional campaigns in various shops and restaurants, including some lovely desserts in Namja Town I didn't want to eat because they were decorated with the characters' faces. (No such qualms for Tales of the Abyss's Mieu - stab stab stab!)

And a few days ago, the complete blu-ray set of these OVAs came out. I remember being somewhat disappointed back when the project was announced that there were only going to be four episodes, but it turned out that these were just the first part of a larger project that spanned five years, ultimately resulting in eleven episodes, each close to twice as long as the episodes of a television anime, so there was quite a long time for the story to be explored. I’ve already written my thoughts on the previous two chapters, but now I’ve finished the third and final part.

And I was very pleased, because this is a story I very much like, populated by characters I really love. Genis is one of my favourite characters in video game history, and I loved how the final episodes made him seem more the heart and soul of the series rather than Lloyd thanks to his friendship with Mithos. That isn't to say I don't like Lloyd as a protagonist, who is a kind, loving and endearing soul very capable of kicking some butt when needed. Presea the axe-weilding little girl I will always remember, and motherly Raine with her daft Japanese name of 'Refill' (to go with her little brother 'Genius') has a very funny intense side. Sheena is a character type I don't usually like but won me over, and even ridiculous lunk Regal is likeable, as by the end is Zelos when it becomes obvious his swagger is just a front. There's a lot of hatred for dojiko Colette, but she doesn't grate on me. Then the classic badass Kratos fills that role probably better than any other I can think of.

The story evolves neatly from a small-scale story about a young girl who from infancy is told she is a 'chosen one' who will become an angel to uncovering a conspiracy involving that old anime chestnut of using people as a vessel to revive a dead but very powerful individual. Stopping this involves travelling between worlds, each of the heroes' allies revealing the painful secrets of their pasts and some fantastic magical powers. There's a hint of one of those anticlimactic stories where the bad guy gets what they want only for things not to work out as they had hoped, suggesting that even without the intervention of the heroes, the plan would never work, but Yggdrasil would clearly have ended up punishing the world without intervention. The anime does a good job of taking the most salient and iconic parts of the long game and other than a slow start pacing it very well so that the whole story is satisfying and works primarily through the feelings and desires of its cast.

And UFOtable most certainly stepped up their game for these animations. Arguably the ultimate effect is that the studio ended up losing relevance, this and other OVAs meaning they only managed to produce one weekly series in the past few years - the high-impact Fate/Zero - but I have the feeling that despite it being a bit of an obscurity in the West beside the big series that come out every season, the OVAs were quite a hit in Japan. And the fact is that it looks beautiful - the production values are high and the already rather lovely character designs look fantastic in motion. There's a little of the problem Sword Art Online had with characters of opposite genders looking rather too similar when the framing is very tight on faces, with Genis and Presea as well as Colette and Mithos looking uncannily like one another at times, but that simply carries over from the game and I actually find the resemblances rather cute.

The fact is that this is fanservice, and I was more or less guaranteed to like it as soon as it became clear the whole game wasn't to be crammed into four episodes. I love the characters and setting and all the other related media, including the manga. But it's not churned out with no effort - it has been done with care and high production values, and I was very impressed throughout. And if there's more to come with Lloyd and Genis - and even Emil - I will be very eager to watch it, even if like the last few episodes here, there's difficulty finding fan translations, because after all the active fansub groups six years ago aren't necessarily the same ones active today.

Wreck-It Ralph (plus Paperman)

The gripes about Wreck-It Ralph have been few and far between – a few gamers begrudge them suggesting Zangief was a ‘bad guy’ when that was really only in the movie and he was no more a bad guy than most of the Street Fighter II cast; some overbearing mothers think no kids’ film should have characters from a bloody game like Mortal Kombat in them; and here and there animation fans think that Disney’s CGI films ought to blaze their own path to regain an original voice rather than doing something very easily mistaken for a Pixar film – which sadly I’ve heard far too often, though some amusing jokes have been made about Disney having made Brave and Pixar having made this, and then the two studios deciding to swap credits. But the number one gripe I’ve heard about Wreck-It Ralph has been more or less exclusive to this fair land: how come America got it in October and we don’t even get it til February of the next year? I’ve only managed to see it because I got a preview thanks to the special offer of a cinema chain – general release is still over three weeks away! Isn’t that just encouraging piracy?

Despite this quibble that has nothing to do with the film itself, I can announce myself an instant fan. It was aimed squarely at me and my generation, but it still managed to be far better than I had hoped for, and much more emotionally engaging. This is how it was most like Pixar – not in the perspective, or the visuals, or the pace, but in how it got me to care.

Before the film came a short – very Pixar, that – showing a romance almost lost but then saved by inanimate objects. Done in rather lovely cell-shading, with a smart decision to make it monochrome but for red lipstick, it was lovely to behold and sweet, but rather trite and threw away its believability rather too much when paper aeroplanes came to life.

Then the main event, and from the start it was right on the money with what appeals to the tail-end of Generation X and the early years of Generation Y – and those of us born in the transitional period. Iconic Disney logos are presented with 8-bit graphics, and there’s chiptune in the music. We’re introduced to Ralph, who is somewhat like Donkey Kong with a touch of the monsters from Rampage – in his game, he tries to demolish a building that displaced him from his home, while the hero, Fix-it Felix Jr, repairs the damage with his magic hammer. When the damage is all repaired, the occupants hurl Ralph from the roof and Felex is rewarded with a medal. The film opens in the support group for bad guys seen in the trailer, which so delighted 20- and 30-somethings with its iconic group of antagonists from Sonic the Hedgehog, Super Mario Bros, Mortal Kombat, Pac-Man, Altered Beast and more. After announcing he’s sick of his life, Ralph returns to his home, notices a party is happening in the penthouse (my one cringe in the film was when I saw Skrillex was the DJ, but this is a reference that will soon be swallowed by time – whereas surprisingly all the 80s and 90s references will likely last a very long while). He goes up and uses Felix’s crippling need to be an awkward nice guy to get himself invited in, but this only leads to disaster. He leaves vowing he’ll transcend his nature and earn his own medal. In the bar from Tappers, where many famous faces are up on the wall and Ryu is having a quiet drink, he meets a space marine from Hero’s Duty, and winds up climbing a tower after the arcade is shut for the night and getting himself a medal. Unfortunately, he also ends up in an escape pod with a hostile, adaptable alien, and shoots into cutesy Mario Kart clone Sugar Rush. He meets the apparently annoying Vanellope there, but soon finds out that more than he expected is going on under the surface in Sugar Rush. Meanwhile, Felix sets out to find his one-time antagonist, with only the ass-kicking female commando Calhoun from Hero’s Duty – whose backstory is perfect - to help him.

One of the joys of the film is the background details. See Sonic fall and lose his rings, or Chun-li spending some time with the Nintendo princesses. I had been told to look for graffiti, especially ‘Aerith lives!’ and though I missed that one, it was only because I was admiring the Internet-pleasing ‘All Your Base are Belong To Us’. I also got a kick out of (LEROY) ‘JENKINS’, the Konami code and little Pong and Dig Dug cameos. There are plenty of foregrounded references thrown in, from a casual mention of Lara Croft and a nod to DDR to the brilliant scene where all the bad guys leave the Pac-Man world and are represented as small 8-bit sprites, but it’s the fine details that will make me and doubtless many more want a repeat viewing.

Not only is the style at the peak of being in fashion with a crowd big on nostalgia and keen for its own variation on Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, with its easy melding of styles and screen space shared by unlikely costars, there also needed to be a little time gap to prevent any accusations of this being a rip-off of ReBoot, which is after all fairly similar in basic outline. It was interesting to me that the whole thing is set in a single arcade, and thus presumably these are but a few of many, many versions of the same characters, bringing the scale closer to that of Toy Story. The clash between a twee older world and a frenetic, violent, modern game is hilarious, and that the game ends on a Pac-Man-ish kill screen is priceless. The references are also not limited to games, with Star Wars and The Wizard of Oz having sound-based jokes, and even a little poster of Bolt can be seen.

But a million funny references in a bad film would still make a bad film. And this is far from it. There are really three plot arcs – Ralph’s attempts to get a medal and rehabilitate himself, the truth of Sugar Rush and why Vanellope is ostracised, and the escaped alien from Hero’s Duty. All become action-packed because of Ralph, all come together nicely, and all are tied up well. Being the type to aim to spot twists, I put together this one’s but was blindsided until only minutes before the reveal because the one in question was shown to secretly be acting for the benefit of another even though it was hard, and teaching that to Ralph – which led to one of the most touching scenes as well as feel-good reparations. Emotions are actually struck very well, from hopes and dreams being dashed to the thought of having to abandon someone to die – and I never thought I’d be so uplifted by the thought of someone punching mentos into diet coke. The fact is that the characters all became likeable, even the ones who seemed annoying, including the silly king with his old-fashioned Disney performance. Fantastic.

I loved it. I only want to know two things – why Vanellope is on the side of the cabinet yet still glitchy at the end if it wasn’t the antagonist’s doing, and…well, just what happens when the arcade closes down…

Paperman post-Oscars note: well, I can’t say I was greatly moved by Paperman, but it was a weak year. It’s a shame – put it against any of the 2007 nominations I’ve seen and it totally pales. 

ソードアート・オンライン / Sword Art Online

The other 2012 series I’ve been watching as it aired other than Chuunibyou has been Sword Art Online – and in exactly the same way, I loved the first half and had mixed feelings about the rest. While the serious turn in Chuunibyou had me feeling it would have been better truncated or held off but worked, however, the far inferior second half of SAO made me quite fed up with the whole thing. Far better to have spun the first of the two plot arcs into the full 26 episodes than to have rushed to include both, and then end up with a series that was deeply disappointing.

SAO was by far the most hyped series of the year, and also the one I was most looking forward to. Unlike most series these days (sequels aside), I actually knew about this one months before it aired, and even recommended it to a lot of friends. I loved the pretty character designs – despite the main characters famously having just about the same features despite being different genders – and the fantasy/sci-fi elements, and really felt engaged by Kirito.

In the near future, gaming technology has developed to the extent that ‘nerve gear’ can completely immerse you in a fantasy world. The interface, placed on your head, makes you believe you are really in the world of the game, engaging all your senses and even your pain receptors, while allowing you to feel you are performing supernatural feats. 14-year-old Kirigaya Kazuto joins the game on day one having enjoyed the experience of being a beta tester. However, before a few hours have elapsed, he finds himself unable to log out. Soon the truth is revealed – the creator of the nerve gear has trapped all the players within the virtual world. He rips away their avatars to reveal their true faces – perhaps the funniest moment in the series, though of course most of the major characters are incredibly good-looking anyway – and tells them that they must beat the game to escape it. Oh, and if they die, there will be no respawning – they will die in real life, too.

The initial criticism of the series was that this had all been done before. .Hack/Sign in particular was cited: it, too, has a virtual MMORPG fantasy-themed world where a player cannot log out. I was also reminded of HunterXHunter’s Greed Island arc, in which the players of an MMORPG can die for real, the Taiwanese Manhua ½ Prince which also explores online fantasy-themed MMOs and the contrasts between real life and avatar characters, and Master of Epic, a gag comedy series about a similar world that in particular I think directly informed the appearance of the character Recon. But that never bothered me. This was clearly not telling the same story as any of those, and the idea was never meant to be all that unique. It was the particular characters and the world itself that hooked me. And so I happily watched.

Kirito initially has a tough time. He is ostracised for the unfair advantage of having played before, and he abandons others in order to play alone. He makes friends, but suffers the real tragedies of the risks of a genuinely deadly game. His emotional state became the target of mockery for many, who loved pairing him up with Linkin Park song clips/lyrics, but I still enjoyed this part. There was a hint of annoyance as the series briefly became episodic and started featuring a new girl every week, who rather annoyingly all fell instantly in love with pretty little Kirito, who used his overpowered avatar to save the day again and again in what may as well have been made-up magical spells. Basically, I could understand people starting to feel the same annoyance towards him as they feel towards Bella Swan in Twilight, who is similarly overly-perfect and has absolutely everyone fall in love with her. The ‘Gary Stu’ term becomes more and more appropriate, and rather than a horrible situation of life and death, of loss and broken dreams, it becomes clear SAO is wish fulfilment and Kirito is overly perfect.

For a while, he’s put in his place a little by the even more overpowered Heathcliff, though later we find out just why that is, and starts a proper romance with Asuna, which is actually very cute, a little boundary pushing (to say nothing of the light novel writer’s pornographic ‘glop’ chapter written later) and rather humanises the character, but just as it gets interesting, the writer seems to think there isn’t much more to explain, skips to the ending, finishes the story in a very unlikely and unsatisfying way, and suddenly a whole new plot arc begins. And a 25-episode series has jumped the shark at episode 15.

The second half is deeply inferior. Without giving too much away, to rescue Asuna, Kirito enters a world of elf ears and fairy wings in what seems despite its flight simulation a terrible game. The aim is apparently for all races to work together, yet none of them do. Of course, perfect perfect Kirito changes all that, and enters the game levelled absurdly high because a lot transferred to his character. A horribly shallow incest story gets thrown in, and the antagonist is a cackling madman rapist looking to take over the world through the nerve gear, and it all goes far too far and becomes incredibly stupid. The resolution is even more unsatisfying than the first arc’s ending and by the end I’d completely gone off Kirito.

So much was done right. The series looks gorgeous, with A-1 now ensconced as one of the studios that can produce very pretty character designs, after The iDOLM@STER and Welcome to the Space Show, and I hope this hit will buoy them to more action series. I’d even watch another series of this. But I have to say, for what I expected to be one of the best series in years, it certainly fell well short. A pity!

バイオハザード ダムネーション / Biohazard: Damnation / Resident Evil: Damnation

Not much need to write a whole lot about Damnation, Capcom and Sony Pictures’ second computer-generated animation in the Resident Evil franchise. I’ll say this: it was more fun than Degeneration. At least it was full of action and didn’t drag on, which despite not having a bad script that film did. It was thin on plot and high on rocket launchers making tyrants explode, and already puts it above Degeneration in terms of action, but it had a terrible script and very unlikeable characters, so it ended up pretty dreadful and too often unintentionally hilarious.

Leon – here horrible characterized as a highly irritating wise-cracker who fits in quips before taking action – is dropped into Russia to investigate biological weapons. He finds them, of course, and some Russian mercenaries (or similar) who he befriends. Meanwhile, Ada Wong is doing her usual infiltration business to find out who sanctioned getting in dangerous viruses. Most of the film is just Leon and co fighting their way from one place to another.

It still looks clunky. Despite some beautiful renderings of a church – internal and external – and clear effort put into making it look good, it moves in an awkward motion-captured way, the lip-synch is all still iffy and the zombies look more comical than anything else. Only the tyrants look good, huge and lumbering – though the lickers aren’t bad.

Ultimately, the film is basically a tie-in to Resident Evil 6, and if you’re not interested in that – as I’m not – then it’s unlikely to have much for you. 

Master of Epic: The Animation Age

With the current anime du jour being the extremely fun Sword Art Online, with a few vocal detractors whinnying about its similarities to .hack, I thought it was time I finally went to revisit Master of Epic, that other anime about life in an online world that was another of the victims of the great 2008 hard drive failure. At least, I think it was 2008.

Anyway, I’m certainly not one of the ones who thinks .hack has some kind of monopoly on fantasy stories set in the world (za warudo) of an MMORPG. Quite apart from .hack, SAO and this, there’s the Taiwanese manhua ½ Prince, which I very much enjoy, and then Ragnarok’s anime and France’s Wakfu, though the latter two simply use the setting with a few oblique references to the origin rather than actively having the game as an explicit part of the narrative. The point is that .hack doesn’t have the monopoly on a setting within an MMORPG, and there’s also Master of Epic.

But Master of Epic is a bit different, because unlike those others, it’s a sketch comedy that pokes fun at MMORPGs in general. Master of Epic – or MoE (get it?) – is an actual MMORPG popular in Japan, with some very Japanese races: humans, elves, big beefy warrior types and of course little tiny cutesy lolis/shotas. The anime basically exists to send up the various silly elements familiar to MMORPG players – sitting down to recover health, setting up shops, forming parties with clueless people. There are also parts based on things that are probably exclusive to the game, like hair getting stinky and having flies circling it if you don’t wash it, but it’s easy for anyone who’s ever played any MMORPG to get the gist of these, and far more of it is universal. I particularly liked the short sequences where people in real life behaved as if in MMORPGs, which was hilarious.

Otherwise, we had things like the terrible beginner who keeps forming plans to beat enemies but rushes headlong into danger and gets destroyed, the big guy who has a crush on a cute little thing only for her to reveal her dark, monster-summoning streak, a little party who endlessly try to help their most useless member only for her to mess everything up, the craftsman who tries hard to impress a girl he likes even if she’s entirely indifferent, and a hilarious member of the big, butch race who had decided to wear a dress and help all other denizens of the MoE world with their fashion sense. Just about every episode is also bookended by a presenter duo who tend to segue into silly news reports that establish the loose theme of the episode, and at the end, a group of five colour-coordinated loli-race characters send up sentai shows in what starts as a quest for fame but ends up a battle against the show’s monstrous producer.

Though the animation is a mixed bag, with some sequences looking atrocious and episode 10 (I think it was) randomly looking better than all the rest, one thing MoE has going for it is the appealing art. The cute child-race, the pretty-boy humans and elves (adorable in SD form), the sexy women and the cuties, they are all drawn in a very attractive way that reminds me of Dog Days, which has just started its second season. Playing on the importance of image, some of the biggest laughs came from characters changing their looks, from masks that weren’t what moé fan Bukottsu expected to forced makeovers where flowing locks turn into Mohawks or a great big cross-dressing hulk picks out a new outfit for you. There’s even one poor female from the muscular race (who look Amazonian) who ends up forced into manba makeup!

Ultimately, MoE is of course throwaway. It’s sketch-based, light comedy with only 12 episodes, and today it’s already more or less forgotten. But if anyone wants a bit of an antidote to the seriousness of Sword Art Online, I won’t hesitate to recommend this bit of fun, for however inconsequential it may be, it is also undeniably funny. 

Kid Icarus – 3DS animations

As part of the promotion for the upcoming release of Kid Icarus, Nintendo are releasing six shorts for the 3DS as part of the Nintendo Video program. I plan on writing thoughts of a few of the shorts on there, but mostly as part of their respective larger series. Kid Icarus doesn’t (yet) have one, though, and after all I’m quite excited abut the game overall, so they get their own entry – even if I have to update it over the course of six weeks, by the end of which I’ll have had the game a while. 

There are really three shorts here, each by a different studio. The first, Thanatos Rising from Production IG’s CGI wing, is a three-parter very much like a game cutscene in the Nintendo style, with bright colours, relatively simplistic textures and over-acting that I’m sure some will find very hard to bear. Obnoxious and overacted though Pit is, I find his voice pretty cute – though it goes too far in the second part with lines about blogs that presumably are an incredibly awkward translation of some Japanese pun and really don’t work in context. Basically, Medusa’s minion, the obvious showtune admirer Thanatos, turns the tables on an army coming to combat him by taking over a giant Trojan walker and attacking a town. Pit gets the gift of flight, as ever, and sets off to save the day. The main point is that Pit is adorable and looks cool, and if that’s all you’re looking for – and in a six-minute animation to promote a game, it should be – you will be satisfied here. Plus there’s something about gears that will always look awesome in 3D – and the 3D without glasses on the 3DS truly is the best kind.

The second, Medusa’s Revenge, is a single 3-minute short from Studio 4˚C, in more traditional anime style. For the first 40 seconds, it looks like 4˚C are going to be lazy and cop out with a whole lot of simple, barely moving animation made vaguely dynamic by camera movements – and Pit is drawn so stumpy and young-looking that he almost looks out of PoPoLoCrois. But while it’s very simple in terms of plotline – Palutena and Medusa exchange threats and Pit fights his way to her – somehow it makes the hairs on my neck stand up and comes across as very cool. I’d like it to be included in the game as an alternate intro, even. True, there’s quite a bit of laziness (a whole lot of those monsters are copied and pasted) and some of the 3D at the start is a bit overdone and flat, but I really liked this nugget. And somehow, perhaps because they were unused to the process and cranked it up too far, I actually got the best 3D effects from this film I have in any since the recent boom. It’s the first time in ages it’s seemed like anything is coming out of the screen at me. So kudos for that.

The third, Palutena’s Revolting Dinner is a two-parter from – of all people – Shaft. I was wrong to expect their trademark quirkiness, though: beyond the daft premise – Palutena accidentally brings some carrots to life and has problems with them – it’s really remarkably ordinary and predictable, which is frankly the opposite from what I’d expect from Shaft. They have anime on the more ordinary side of course – just look at REC – but they actually got Shinbou Akiyuki to helm this. The way the story builds to its chaotic ending felt quite Pani Poni Dash!, but otherwise it struck me as a pedestrian way to deal with the property.

That said, the art is really cute in it – though Pit looks a bit young – and it’s fun seeing Palutena uncomfortable, or with a big squash on her head. I just had hoped for something cleverer and a little less like any given anime for small children. 

Wakfu: Season 2

It’s been a pretty long time coming – the 26 episodes of this second season were spread over more than a year, with long gaps between its bursts of releases. But it was well worth the wait, and after all I hadn’t been waiting as long as many fans: I didn’t get into the first series until after the second had already begun to air, as it was the stunning S2 intro sequence that first piqued my interest. It displayed sequences I never thought were possible for Flash animators, great characters and of course, what is for me the best cartoon theme song of the last ten years at least, ‘Sur tes pas’.

So I entered the second season unashamedly a big fan. I remain one at the end of it, though there were disappointments on the way and I felt like where season two was going to make or break the show to a wider audience, it ultimately fell short and squandered its opportunity to swell its fanbase. I’m quite fortunate – I could pick up the show’s magazine while I was in Paris (not that it was easily found), and I snapped up a Yugo figurine when Ankama were in London for the MCM Expo (complete with hilarious broken English on the box) – but where I had hoped to see the title gain a popularity up there with the new My Little Pony, sadly it was never to be and if anything, enthusiasm died as season 2 looked to be meandering and lacking in direction or a strong antagonist. And those criticisms were, I have to say, pretty valid.

Season 1 – don’t read on if you don’t wish to be spoiled - left us with the show’s driving antagonist nothing more than a pile of dust. Tristepin was also dead, and nowhere to be seen in the intro sequence. The Eliacube, the item that had sent Nox into his madness, was in the heroes’ possession, which was a politically sensitive situation. When Yugo and Adamaï decide to interact with the cube, it releases Quilby, the only other member of the Eliotrope race – who tells them the rest of the race, or at least the children, are safe but sealed away in another dimension. He sends the Brotherhood on a quest to retrieve his ‘Dofus’ so that he may be reunited with his dragon half, a step towards freeing the Eliotrope children. But all is not as it seems with Quilby, and the heroes are too trusting. Meanwhile, the demon Rushu, lord of the Shushus, yearns to be unleashed.

The elements of a great second season are there, but sadly it doesn’t work quite as well as the first season, perhaps mirroring it too closely. There are two major problems, and the first is the procrastination. Though some of season 1’s weakest episodes were when the Brotherhood diverge from their quest to help people in need, that was okay because they needed character-building and allies. Here, a point is made of how the characters are uncomfortable they are wasting time, and it just makes the overall arc feel very weak: the brilliant last three episodes in particular could have been expanded to five or more, rather than more time being spent on boufbowl or ‘wabbits’. The second problem is the lack of a great antagonist. Nox made the first season brilliant: he was sinister, iconic and yet also sympathetic. He was not defeated, except by himself, and he was always there, a driving, menacing figure with an agenda. Here, Quilby’s deception is clever but means there is little impetus until the big climax, Rushu is mostly comical until the very end and has no defined goal to be directly stopped, and generally the season lacked the impression of time running out.

For all it is inferior in story terms to season 1, though, there is much here that is brilliant. New characters are really endearing – Eva’s sister Cléophée is a great addition; Remington Smisse, though underused at the end, is an extremely interesting cad of a man, and Quilby himself is until he goes all Espada brilliantly duplicitous. The Sufokians were great for so little screentime. Some of the incidental stories are superbly-crafted and I even liked Goultard (see the specials) showing up at the end to fight alongside his student: everything was going a bit Gurren Lagann so in my view it worked superbly.

I feel Ankama were wearing their influences on their sleeves more here. The Eliotrope plot felt very derivative of Dragonball Z, and Ankama let loose with the references to other media, from a whole episode pastiching video games (with Pinpin posing like Chun Li) to Easter egg cameos from numerous anime characters: Luffy, Naruto, Mei, Muten Roshi, Ichigo…

The anime influence has always been there, of course, and it’s not as though Wakfu lost its unique flavour. And though some parts looked awkward or just lazily animated, other segments were masterful – witness all Quilby’s big fights, or the best of the boufbowl scenes. They also developed the mix of flash with traditional animation for dynamic zooms into a character, and there I felt a tingle down my spine: if this angle is developed, it could make a whole new, superb avenue of flash animation.

I’m sad that there may be no more Wakfu on the TV. Though Yugo’s arc is largely complete, there’s still so much more story to tell. Well, a Dofus feature is in the works, and purportedly one for Wakfu too. But if there’s a season 3, sign me up.

Because I can’t think of any other property that could nearly reduce me to tears by having a character take off his hat.